Beauty of the Internet – History of Football Helmets

So one of the things that I love about the Internet is that you can find information on any topic. I am a total trivia junkie – I’m often called the “King of Useless Trivia” by friends/coworkers. Therefore, the Internet is the perfect resource for someone like me because somebody, somewhere has compiled the “useless” information that I am looking for already. One such example is The Helmet Project. For 9 years this site has been collecting images of every football helmet ever – pro or college. They have rare USFL helmets and obscure helmets worn in one bowl game by a college team, etc. I pulled an example image for the two schools I attended for undergrad – LSU (above) and ULL (formerly USL below)

It’s actually a pretty cool site for a sports junkie like myself. It actually reminded me of a very cool story. The helmet below was the helmet worn by the Boston/New Orleans/Portland Breakers of the USFL.

You can read the history of the Breakers here, but we were living in a suburb of Portland (Lake Oswego, OR) when the team went defunct. My sister’s high school (Lakeridge High) was a football powerhouse in the area and someone had a connection to the Breakers and somehow managed to get most of the pro team’s equipment for the high school – including the helmets. So the helmet you see above was the helmet for the Boston/New Orleans/Portland Breakers and the Lakeridge Pacers. Like I said, I love the Internet – guess that’s why I’ve worked for iChoose, JCPenney.com, Blockbuster Online and ThinkCash!

2 responses to “Beauty of the Internet – History of Football Helmets”

Great story on the Portland Breakers helmets being sold to the high school! Something similar happened with the Pittsburgh Maulers (USFL 1984) after they disbanded; and other teams probably had similar situations.

For that era, the USFL helmets were certainly ahead of their time, including the Michigan Panthers helmets. To this day, it is still one of the only helmets to have a decal go all the way to the base of the helmet on each side, actually surrounding the ear hole.